Nowadays, a purchase is more than a simple monetary exchange between buyer and seller. Due to vast amounts of competition in every industry, a company must ensure its customer is more than satisfied at every step of the buying journey. If not, they must address it quickly, or that consumer will likely move on to another brand.
The most critical success metric for any business is Customer Experience (CX). Customer Experience (CX) takes customer service up a notch. When measuring CX, companies examine if a consumer is pleased with the end product or service while also considering customer satisfaction levels in every interaction with the company.
Mortgage servicing lies among a handful of niche industries that historically didn’t need to worry too much about CX. The primary reason is that homeowners have never had much say on which firm is servicing their home loans, as they are bought and sold between loan originators and investors. Therein, a mortgage servicer is more accountable to the investors who need their assets to perform.
That’s not to say that mortgage servicers don’t care whether or not homeowners are satisfied. The last thing they want is verbal and written consumer complaints. Too many of those can spur inquiries from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and no Servicer needs or wants that. That’s why most of the current mortgage servicing KPIs revolve around quantitative, customer-service-driven call center KPIs such as the number of calls completed, abandonment rates, one-call resolution, and consumer wait times.
Below are the current KPIs that mortgage servicers monitor.
While these metrics are important, they’re slightly flawed as customer experience KPIs for a few reasons. First, homeowners might be offered multiple solutions, but no homeowner in the loss mitigation process has any control over this “take-it-or-leave-it” scenario. Because of this, are the KPIs of types of workouts presented versus those accepted valid? And do they offer any true insight into the customer’s experience?
Mortgage servicing impacts every American, whether working within the industry, owning a home, renting, or saving for retirement. However, the mortgage servicing experience is lacking for all sides. Servicers lack the tools to measure the customer experience effectively due to limited accessibility. The same accessibility limitations often prevent consumers from engaging with their services at all, which is especially not good for default resolution departments.
The entire mortgage ecosystem can perform better by giving consumers the same digital access points that already exist within financial industries and are also prevalent in mortgage originations. Brace’s digital solution offers both consumer-facing and servicer-facing platforms that work in tandem with one another, enabling a single source of truth.
Even if a Servicer implements Brace’s digital servicing platform, it doesn’t mean all homeowners will engage digitally. However, the technology will be able to track critical CX metrics automatically. Through this, servicing efficiency will instantly increase since no time is spent by employees gathering the data. Also, departments can be restructured to operate more efficiently to meet consumer demands.
Through implementing a connected servicing infrastructure, here are some modern experience KPIs Servicers can now measure.
Delays in the flow of information are a homeowner’s and Servicer’s worst enemy in the default resolution process. Tracking every consumer’s access point (digital, phone, mail, text) and how quickly each method was resolved gives Servicers vital data to improve the customer experience based on consumer preference.
Tracking why homeowners are contacting Servicers is also crucial for improving workflows and providing a consistent and quality experience. These KPIs give more insights into some of the quantitative metrics Servicers already use.
With digital tools, Servicers can quickly offer numerous loss mitigation options to consumers. While it’s up to the homeowner to pick the option that is best for them, examining the percentage of accepted workouts versus those presented can provide valuable insight that can streamline future loss mitigation offerings and decrease the odds of a multiple default scenario.
Brace’s digital solution offers both consumer-facing and servicer-facing platforms that work in tandem with one another, enabling a single source of truth. All parties can see the status of an application, what workout solutions have been presented, and which workout is accepted.
Download the Brace ebook: Proactive Mortgage Servicing KPIs to learn how a connected infrastructure can improve Servicer success in all areas.
